A gamer who lives by the Rule of Fun. Once he heard their new campaign setting had pirates in it, he promptly derailed his original character and came up with Luffy. Leaps before he looks, acts before he thinks, but can back up his craziness with surprisingly thorough knowledge of the game rules and mechanics.

Berserk Button: Understandably enough, given how much he enjoys having a good time with his friends, he becomes enraged when it hits him that DM likely never intended to join their party in the first place, having designed Kurahadol in such a way that he wouldn't work well with them].

Magnetic Hero: Played with in that Luke actively tries to make everyone's recruitment go easier, as well as help the newer players feel more welcome in the group.

Morality Chain: Luffy serves as one for Zoro; due to the swordsman's Undying Loyalty flaw, he can't just ignore what Luffy wants, no matter what Cory would prefer. Especially when it's 'Captain's orders'.

The Munchkin: Notably, Cory helped him design Luffy. He's very good at using those powers in ways that shock the GM, though, as well as knowing the rules well enough to justify his actions.

Luke's best friend, whom he's been gaming with since high school. A dedicated power gamer, he's all about crafting characters capable of killing anything they come across, twinking them out with obscure third party supplements and flaws he figures won't ever come up.

Though he intended to use Zoro's design from the start, the GM disallowed it, sticking him with the predesigned Coby instead. Zoro didn't even have a name until he decided to swipe the one the GM was using for an NPC.

Cursed with Awesome: One of his flaws is waking up when something out of the ordinary is nearby.

Natalie: That's a flaw?

Even EXP Hounds Have Standards: Complains about the GM's abuse of puppy-punting to establish enemies as evil, and when the Usopp Pirates first confront them, seems upset at the thought they might have to kill the kids.

Hoist by His Own Petard: Brought plenty of third-party books along to justify how much he twinked out Zoro. The GM now uses those books to design his own Mooks and villains.

Gave Zoro tons of Flaws he expected would never actually come into play. Unfortunately for him, the GM loves to hit those as much as possible.

The Munchkin: Gamebusting Min-Maxer with plenty of Psychopath thrown in. Notably, he's also responsible for Luffy and Medaka's minmaxing, the latter of which was actually done without Rika's knowledge.

NPC: Roronoa Zoro was supposed to be one, but Cory took advantage of the GM's Exact Words about getting to play his overpowered design if he gave him a name and backstory to take over.

Plot Armor: The GM put this on Coby against Cory's will, since Cory wanted to kill him off quickly and roll up a different character.

Railroading: Part of the deal he hammered out with GM when he hijacked Zoro is that Cory will have to comply with certain plot hooks he's got planned.

Undying Loyalty: Took the 'Loyalty' flaw figuring it'd never come up since Zoro answers to no one. At least, not until he agreed to join Luffy's crew.

He later upgrades it to actual Undying Loyalty, essentially meaning Luke could make his character commit suicide if her wanted. But he trusts Luke enough to put his character's life in his hands.

Unreliable Expositor: The "Island of Rare Animals" arc is presented as Cory retelling the events of that session to somebody else. This means he doesn't necessarily recall things that didn't interest him at the time, such as Phil explaining why they should let him draw their flag.

A new addition to their gaming group, Natalie is a dedicated roleplayer who put a lot of thought into her character and her background. A whole lot of thought. As in "That's not a character sheet, that's a novel!" amount of thought. Provides plenty of self-narration.

Rule of Drama: Gave Nami her hatred of pirates despite knowing the others would be playing them specifically to create dramatic tension. This also drives her actions nearly as much as Luke's fueled by the Rule of Fun.

Rika (Kaya, formerly Medaka)

Cory's cousin. First heard from when she calls during the Orange Town arc. Since Luke and Cory go way back and she visits fairly frequently, she's on good terms with Luke, too. Has been considering applying to the same college, so she's been asking Cory for more information about it. Joins the group to play Medaka in the Devil's Tower arc, then creates Kaya for the Syrup Town arc.

Chekhov's Gunman: Went from a brief mention during the Orange Town arc to a full-fledged player.

Damsel out of Distress: Kaya's clever applications of her clerical skills emphasize that despite circumstances, she's anything but helpless. Unfortunately, Rika still decides that Kaya's too weak for her liking, as she didn't want to play a 'heal-bot' and felt like, despite her accomplishments, she hadn't contributed enough.

Motor Mouth: Often speakssoquickly that some of her words runtogetherlikeso. Getsworsethemoreexcitedshegets. Trying to be better about this.

The Munchkin: Metagamer who appears to have memorized plenty of enemy statistics. Enough that just hearing the name of one leads to her rattling off their average stats. Also, Cory got ahold of her character sheet after she designed Medaka and added some Min-Maxing, apparently without her knowledge.

Name's the Same: The GM also named the little girl who gives Zoro riceballs Rika.

Opt Out: Rather than create a new character for the Baratie arc, Rika opts to just sit back and watch because she couldn't come up with one in time.

The Roleplayer: Different from Natalie in that she doesn't "inhabit" her characters so much, but makes sure that her characters act believably, such as when Usopp tried to warn Kaya about the plot against her life.

The GM's roommate, he also knows Luke and Cory in passing, but wasn't interested in joining any of their campaigns... until he met Natalie, Rika and DM. Rather than designing his own character, he took an NPC the GM had designed for Syrup Village. Completely unfamiliar with how the game works, for obvious reasons.

Alternative Character Interpretation: invoked His initial lying when meeting the others actually stems from Phil honestly misreading his character sheet and thinking Usopp really does have thousands of followers. However, it seems the GM had intended for him to have a reptuation for lying from the start to justify his NPC being unable to rally any support for the player party in Syrup.

His tall tales uncannily predicting the future, meanwhile, appear to be the result of the GM accidentally mixing his notes in with Usopp's profile when he handed them over to Phil.

Butt Monkey: Unintentionally set himself up for this by mocking the others' gaming hobby before he met the girls.

Ascended Extra: Originally, Sanji didn't even have a name; he was created as Baratie Waiter #3.

Badass Unintentional: GM's plan was for the Strawhats to bail out a nameless waiter when Fullbody tried attacking him. Then Fullbody rolled a natural 1, followed by the nameless waiter getting three 20s for an automatic win.

An old friend of Cory's. She introduced him to tabletop gaming and taught him everything he knows about making absurdly overpowered characters.

Friendly Rivalry: The duel between Zoro and Mihawk is a result of an OOC argument between their players over which of them made the superior swordsman.

The Game Master

The GM

The guy in charge. One Piece: Grand Line 3.5 is actually his first attempt at serving as the gamemaster, but he's not inexperienced, just used to being on the other side of the screen. An expert Munchkin himself, he's running things with Luke and Cory's tendencies well in mind, ready to exploit their every weakness.

Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: Where the player's speech bubbles are outlined in their trademark color, his have a yellow backdrop. When speaking normally or narrating, they're simple boxes; they're only shaped like typical speech bubbles when he's actually providing an NPC or enemy's voice.

Crazy-Prepared: Planned for various scenarios, including Zoro joining Luffy's crew and activating his Extreme Loyalty flaw, Rika quitting Kaya's character, predicting DM's traps in another campaign, and when DM gives the others his notes, he sends them a text telling them to stop reading them and that they're decoys.

Dark and Troubled Past: Hinted at. A side conversation in the Baratie Arc reveals he used to be part of Natalie's Jerkass gaming group, and may in fact be her friend Gordon.

A latter flashback that the GM has pretty much confirms it.

Enforced Method Acting: Offered Rika bonus roleplaying EXP if she actually slapped Phil when her character struck Usopp. Doubles as Hypocritical Humor since earlier he'd unnecessarily warned Phil he didn't have to hit DM for real while striking Kurahadol.

Flaw Exploitation: If a character has a Flaw or other weakness in their design, you can bet the GM's going to hit that as many times as possible.

GMPC: Designed one to round out the group when only Luke and Cory were playing, but decided against using them. Their very existence is likely a Chekhov's Gun.

Grappling with Grappling Rules: His problems understanding the grappling rules lead to him letting Luke slide without looking anything up. Later, he averts further issues by taking the time to study and understand them before their next session.

Kick the Dog: Deliberately creates his villains to be as nasty as possible because "with you guys, I can't be too subtle."

Killer Game Master: Focuses perhaps overmuch on 'beating' the Player Party as opposed to fleshing out the world at large. (Of course, it doesn't help that the efforts he has made at worldbuilding tend to be ignored...)

Zerg Rush: A favorite tactic. Has used skittles to represent individual enemies, leading to:

Cory: Hoooooly Crap. The GM just opened up three bags of skittles.

Others

DM

The group's former dungeon master. She used to run campaigns for Luke, Cory and the GM, but was forced to give it up after becoming too busy to continue. First appears at the start of the Captain Kuro arc, where she plays Kurahadol herself. As of the Baratie arc, she's now serving as a secondary game master.

Admiring the Abomination: Expresses genuine admiration and approval when the GM manages to negate her special maneuvers and take control of Kurahadol through the flaws she thought she had negated.

Grappling with Grappling Rules: Her grasp of the grappling rules is great enough that she can mantain a fast-paced debate with Luke while their characters are fighting.

Jerk Justifications: She justifies Kurahadol's insulting behavior by claiming she's just keeping him in-character, despite the problems that causes. During her tenure as a Killer Game Master, she may have used these for her villains, but the players never got far enough to find out.

I Take Offense to That Last One: When Luke and the GM talk about how horrific her characters were during her term as a Game Master, she acts most irritated by the accusation that she never bothered with backstories; it's not her fault they never survived long enough to learn them!

Likewise, she protests that there were plenty of signs of the characters she used to play falling to the dark side. The other party members just didn't do anything in time to stop her from turning and killing them all.

Shadow Archetype: Aspects of her character revealed during the Syrup Island arc create this contrast with the other players, particularly Natalie, Cory and Luke:

She's one to Natalie in how they play Kurahadol/Nami, respectively. Both willingly create dramatic tension within the group with their character concepts; however, whereas Natalie is flexible enough to work with the others despite Nami's hatred of pirates, DM has Kurahadol bait and insult Phil/Usopp and is completely unrepentant about the strife this causes, saying she's just being true to the character.

Her Motive Rant when she explains Kurahadol's secret to the others reveals a parallel with Cory, as she proclaims they can get tons of experience and loot by turning on the citizens of Syrup.

While Luke enjoys having fun with his friends, DM cares more about her personal enjoyment, and doesn't particularly care if her actions hurt anyone else's ability to enjoy the game. When she mashes Luke's Berserk Button as Kurahadol, she's shocked by his sudden rage and doesn't seem to get why he's pissed.

According to Cory, she was fond of this even before she started running her own games.

Later, it's revealed that she likely was planning this all along, and gave Kurahadol the Shakushi manuver, which doesn't discriminate between friend or foe.

Unwitting Pawn: Jango reveals to Kaya that he originally hypnotized Kurahadol into believing he was Captain Kuro so he could take the fall for the real one. However, before they could put that plan into action, the real Captain Kuro abruptly died, and Kurahadol's belief that he was the real thing was so strong he picked up some of his skills.

We Can Rule Together: Her plan as Kurahadol is to use the loot and XP they gain from taking out the Black Cat pirates to start pillaging the neighboring islands like real pirates, and eventually take over the East Blue. She expects the others to go along with this, especially Cory, and is surprised when they refuse.

Your Mind Makes It Real: Kurahadol isn't actually the real Captain Kuro. Jango's hypnosis not only convinced him that he IS, but gave him several of the original's abilities.

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